Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Yarn blanks

A few weeks ago I heard about yarn blanks for the first time. If you haven't heard of it
– it's a technique where you first knit the yarn into a rectangular piece (a blank), then you dye the knitted piece and then you unravel it again and knit it into something new.

Why?

Well, if you knit a sock yarn double and then dye it in say a gradient, you can then knit two identical socks that go from light to dark along the sock! Or you can dye it in different colours so that the sock changes in colour from cuff to toe.

But the amazing thing is that the socks will always be identical! Cool eh?

You can also knit the yarn in a single thread, dye it and it can be used for an amazing shawl that changes in colour. Or dye a pattern that will give interesting colour effects when knitted.The possibilities are endless!

I had to give it a go. Knitting a blank is pretty boring and even though I knitted it on 10mm needles it still took soooo long.

Here are my hand-knitted blanks. Unfortunately I was so excited that I forgot to take a photo of the blue/green/teal blank before I unraveled it...

It was dyed teal at the top with a bright turquoise the first 3 meters to give an edge on the top. The middle part of the blank was dyed in emerald and lime. And the bottom part of the blank was the blue.

This is exciting! Photos of the socks coming soon!

But to be able to make lots of blanks I really need a knitting machine. After lots
of research I managed to get in contact with a lovely lady called Jo. I went to see her a couple of days ago and not only did she give me the machine and a custom
made table for free – she also spent 3 hours showing me how to put it
up and down and taught me everything I need to know to get started. Then
she sent me home with my bag full of lemons, a jar of freshly made
pickles and an oregano root to plant in my garden!

Love it!

Yesterday I put up the knitting machine and it's amazing how many blanks you can knit up in a couple of hours! I made 7 double knitted blanks for socks of the merino/silk/nylon sock yarn and 4 single blanks for shawls of the 100% BFL. Now the fun part will begin!

oh cool Helene! I was given a blank once and dyed it but did a terrible job and the resulting socks were very boring. If I was doing it again I would make the stripes shorter because I only used 70 grams of the yarn to make the socks so still had other colours to be knitted. I know that yours will be lovely though of course!Let me know when you have some for sale so I can get first pick :OP